Is There Still Any Push For Progressivism-- Even Inside The Corporate Democratic Party?

Last night we noted that the Dems have a plan for another bailout. Former Congressman Alan Grayson, who likes Pelosi, waded through hundreds of pages and called me and said-- word for word: "This is a horrendous strategic mistake. People are suffering terribly-- far worse than in 2008-- and they deserve to have someone on their side." I feel pretty certain Grayson would have been on their side and voted against it-- but that New Dem Darren Soto, who represents his old Orlando district, certainly won't. Krystal Ball explained how it's just another useless messaging bill-- which is basically what all the Democratic staffer are saying as well-- that will never pass that but that shows Pelosi's contempt and disdain for progressives. You should listen to Krystal in the clip above... kind of sad, although it helps explain why there's so much talk on the left about the formation of a non-establishment third party lately.

How about the Working Families Party? Ah... yeah, how about them? A conservative Republican pretending to be a Democrat, Wlla Street shill Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, and her Democratic establishment attorney (Martin Connor, who was used by Melinda Katz last year to steal the Queens District Attorney race from Tiffany Cabán) succeeded in getting AOC kicked off the Working Families Party ballot line. The official GOP line (Caruso-Cabrera speaking): "The AOC campaign is in shock. She has hurt working people of the Bronx and Queens with her votes and creates disunity within our party. Her own campaign spokesman ran away from her in March. No wonder why pro-union forces don’t want her and neither do our neighborhoods."

The hapless Working Families Party State, through their NY Director Sochie Nnaemeka: "The Working Families Party is unwavering in our support for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and we believe the congresswoman is the leader her district and this country needs. Limits on petitioning due to coronavirus have led to numerous ballot challenges, including this one."

Back to the Pelosi proposal. She wouldn't go along with any of the progressive priorities, like temporary universal healthcare during the pandemic... nor recurring Universal Basic Income payments during the pandemic.. and, of course, no paycheck guarantee program to avoid further job losses, but she did give Hoyer what he most wanted most in the whole wide world: the lobbyist bailout. Lobbyists-- the most hated group in America by Democrats, Republicans and independents, but beloved by Stony Hoyer, the Representative of K Street! That's who Pelosi is bailing out? The thermometer on the right has candidates running in primaries against Pelosi's conservative incumbents. Please give them some support if you don't want to see the Democratic Party continue drifting ever rightward, ever more corporate and ever more corrupt.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has the leverage-- the numbers-- to force Pelosi's hand, right? The answer is yes, they have the numbers to make her rewrite it. But do they have the cohesiveness? Or the will? They seem reluctant to use their power (to put it mildly). If you didn't listen to Krystal... do it now.

Common Dreams ran a statement from the American Economic Liberties Project urging Democrats to get a spine and vote no.

"This bill delivers charity in place of justice, and Congress should vote it down," said Economic Liberties’ Executive Director Sarah Miller. "Without addressing corporate power, additional aid to the people will ultimately end up in the hands of banks, monopolies, and landlords. While the need for humanitarian assistance is urgent, fundamentally this bill is not a serious attempt to grapple with power. It includes important programs, such as aid to states and localities, unemployment insurance, nutrition assistance, and hazard pay, but doesn’t address the roll-up of power happening throughout the economy that results in systemic exploitation of workers, consumers, small businesses, taxpayers, and communities."

"The bill has no prohibition on corporate mergers. It bails out corporate lobbyists and corrupt mortgage servicers. It funnels money to monopolistic insurance company executives. And it has no constraints on private equity firms currently using public money from the Federal Reserve to cherry pick corporate assets on the cheap. Even some of the positive aspects, like a provision authorizing crackdowns on price gouging, are poorly conceived, for example allowing the corporate lobbyist-dominated Federal Trade Commission to block state officials from acting.

"We opposed the first CARES Act because it encouraged, rather than put the brakes on, the consolidation of corporate power. That bill was structured to support massive aid to the stock market, and a trickle of aid to the rest of us. Progressives should demand this bill address the injustices deriving from this consolidation of power in addition to humanitarian needs.

"Our economy is being restructured whether we like it or not, so we need structural solutions to our current predicament. At the very least, the House should pass a merger moratorium, which is supported by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of Americans. And we encourage the House to pick up Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Senator Josh Hawley’s idea to have the government directly support payrolls," added Miller. Problematic provisions in the bill include:

• A Corporate Lobbyist Bailout: The bill makes Paycheck Protection Program funds available to 501(c)6 trade associations, which is the institutional vehicle for corporate lobbying.
• A Dark Money Group Bailout: The bill extends Paycheck Protection Program funds available to 501(c)4 trade associations, which is the institutional vehicle for dark money political spending.
• No Merger Prohibition: This bill has no mechanism to block or slow pandemic-related corporate mergers. Already, Amazon is rumored to buy AMC theaters, and Uber is in talks to buy Grubhub.
• Tax Cut for the Wealthy: This bill includes a repeal of the State and Local Tax Deduction, which primarily benefits the wealthy.
• Bailout of Mortgage Servicers: This bill extends Federal aid to mortgage servicers, who were the thinly capitalized entities at fault for the foreclosure crisis. These servicers have fought attempts at reform of their industry to make their business safer and are now demanding a no-strings-attached bailout.
• Subsidies for Health Insurance Monopolies: Rather than extending Medicare or Medicaid to the unemployed, this bill would fund COBRA, subsidizing health insurance monopolies and offering nothing to millions of Americans whose jobs never offered health insurance to begin with.

Who Owns Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, The Wall Street Shill Challenging AOC?

On Monday, we broke the story that one of Andrew Cuomo's top political operatives, Maggie Moran, is helping Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a corporate hack Wall Street is running against AOC, to raise money and find staff for the June 23 primary. Moran has been working surreptitiously but the cat is out of the bag now. [Note: Moran doesn't do anything without Cuomo's approval.]

On Wednesday, investigative journalist Lee Fang followed up at The Intercept by exposing Caruso-Cabrera's financial backers-- basically Wall Street titans who AOC has rubbed the wrong way by standing up for working families from her position on the House Financial Services Committee. "Disclosures," wrote Fang, "show that at least two dozen finance industry professionals, including several prominent private equity executives and investment bankers, made early donations to Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC contributor who is challenging Ocasio-Cortez. Caruso-Cabrera was a registered Republican until a few years ago and authored a 2010 book advocating for several conservative positions, including an end to Medicare and Social Security, which she called 'pyramid schemes.'" Fang didn't mention Cuomo or Moran, nor the role of the DCCC, which has forbidden Democratic operatives to work for candidates challenging incumbents-- although they seem to have made an exception for operatives who work against AOC, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

Among the big donors Fang found were major Cuomo backers like Glenn Hutchins, the billionaire co-founder of Silver Lake Partners (who gives to Dems), James Passin of Firebird Capital (who gives mostly to Republicans), Ken Langone, a Cuomo intimate and founder of Home Depot (who has given hundreds of thousands dollars to the NRCC), Bruce Schnitzer of Wand Partners (who gives mostly to Republicans), Steve Holzman Vantis Capital hedge fund manager (who gives mostly to Republicans), Jeffrey Rosen of Lazard (who gives mostly to Democrats), Bradley Seaman, managing partner of Parallel49 Equity (a Mitt Romney donor), scumbag lobbyist and former Dick Cheney staffer Ron Christie (who gives only to Republicans), Doug Cifu, CEO of Virtu Financial (who gives to crooked Democrats), Facundo Bacardi, an heir to the Bacardi fortune (who gives mostly to Republicans), Thaddeus Arroyo, a leading executive at AT&T (who gives to Republicans + Hillary Clinton), and Jeff Kwatinetz, a top entertainment industry promoter, business partner of Ice Cube's, crony of Steve Bannon's, big Mayo Pete donor and old friend of mine.

The Caruso-Cabrera campaign announced last week that it had collected nearly $1 million in fundraising over the first quarter of this year. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is funded by anonymous corporate donations and has spent tens of millions of dollars electing congressional Republicans, also said recently that it would mobilize business interests in support of Caruso-Cabrera.

In her first year in office, Ocasio-Cortez has used her perch in Congress to eviscerate leading figures on Wall Street. During congressional hearings last April, she pushed JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon over whether bankers should have been criminally prosecuted over the 2008 financial crisis.

“I wasn’t sent here to safeguard and protect profit, I was sent here to safeguard and protect people,” said Ocasio-Cortez in November during a hearing over the conduct of the private equity industry and its role in downsizing companies.

Ocasio-Cortez has served as a lightning rod in the Democratic Party, attracting criticism from more business-friendly elements of the establishment over her outspoken support for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign and her advocacy for policies such as Medicare for All.

The lurch towards that left has provoked some traditionally Republican interests, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to use the New York primary this summer as an opportunity to push back on the ideological shift represented by Ocasio-Cortez.

...Caruso-Cabrera does not have a policy page outlining her beliefs or positions on her campaign website. In recent radio interviews, she has positioned herself as a stalwart of the moderate faction of the Democratic Party, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Joe Biden. “I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-same sex marriage, I’m very pro-immigrant, I am centrist for sure,” Caruso-Cabrera said on New York’s AM 970.

But the candidate’s beliefs are explained in detail in a book she authored in 2010 titled, You Know I’m Right: More Prosperity, Less Government, which included a forward by Larry Kudlow, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council.

In the book, Caruso-Cabrera calls Medicare and Social Security “the country’s biggest pyramid schemes,” and wrote that she would end both programs in favor of a privatized voucher system. Medicare, Caruso-Cabrera wrote, “is another pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme” that should be replaced with a health savings account that gives “seniors $1,000 or $2,000 a year to start.” Social Security, she notes, should be replaced with a private account system, in which Americans are incentivized to invest in the stock market.

Caruso-Cabrera devotes an entire chapter to the many policy successes of the Reagan administration, and writes that she favors tax cuts and deregulation, including eliminating entire federal agencies such as the Labor Department.

Some of the most strident language in the book is reserved for the Obama administration’s attempts to crack down on wealthy individuals who had taken advantage of offshore tax havens. The push to force Switzerland to hand over the names of U.S. nationals using secret bank accounts to dodge taxes, she wrote, put America on a “dangerous path” that would enable foreign dictatorships to similarly seize wealth kept abroad.

“Freedom and democracy are best secured when banking secrecy and tax havens exist,” Caruso-Cabrera wrote.

Please consider contributing to the AOC campaign by clicking on the Blue America Worthy Incumbents thermometer above. Oh, and I knew Jeff Kwatinetz before he was a major mogul. At the time, he managed Korn and they started a label which was distributed by Reprise. The first release was by Orgy. Remember this?

Obama Sounded Like He Endorsed Bernie And AOC, Not Status Quo Joe

The video above is most of Obama's predictably eloquent endorsement of Status Quo Joe yesterday, starting with the part where he tries to wash the blood off his hands for having coordinated the successful neoliberal effort to derail the #NotMeUs campaign.

And there's some stuff there that anyone can like. "If I were running today," he said in his endorsement of a virtual corpse who talks about nothing but the good old days between 2008 and 20016, "I wouldn't run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different. There's too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards." That basically, sounds like a critique of the entire Status Quo Joe campaign.

Is he begging Biden to change course and move beyond the Back to Normalcy campaign? "We have to look to the future. Bernie understands that." Did he have any choice here but to insert that absurd assertion that "Joe understands that?" He then claimed that Biden has the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history. Biden isn't the nominee yet but... OK. And, as he said, the world has changed and Biden's foot dragging platform is not all that progressive for 2020-- maybe compared to 1960, but no, not now, not in a significantly changed world, which includes a significantly changed electorate.

He want on to talk about the need for "real structural change" and how we have to confront the "vast inequalities created by the new economy" (which Biden is still utterly clueless about) and economic policies that give young people leaving school "faith in the future-- and relief from crushing student loan debt. so we need to do more than just tinker around the edges"-- which is exactly what Biden's so-called "progressive" overtures of the last week do... tinker around the edges... lower the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 60, which is about 1% of the way to the Medicare for All goal and a disjointed, grudging and very partial debt forgiveness package.

This sounds like the speech Obama would have made if he was endorsing Bernie: "We have to go further, to give everybody a great education, a lasting career and a stable retirement." That's what Bernie's platform is all about, not Status Quo Joe's codified defensive posturing, which no one ever even bothers looking at.

Obama-- far more than Biden-- says we need to go beyond the Affordable Care Act to make healthcare "a reality for everybody." Again, it sounds like he could be endorsing Bernie far more than endorsing Status Quo Joe.

"We have to return the U.S. to the Paris Agreement and lead the world in reducing the pollution that causes climate change. But science tells us we have to go much further. And it's time for us to accelerate progress on bold new green initiatives that make our economy a clean energy innovator, save us money and secure our children's future." OK, not just Bernie here, but AOC and the Green New Deal as well, right?

That's why I want to reiterate something I wrote yesterday, buried in a long post about Andrew Cuomo that many people may have missed:

Maggie Moran, Cuomo's top political operative-- the one not currently serving a prison term-- is surreptitiously fund-raising against AOC and soliciting campaign operatives to work against her reelection.

I haven't heard a peep from the DCCC about this, have you? Doesn't it violate Cheri Bustos' and Nancy Pelosi's rule about Democratic operatives not working against incumbents? Have they banned Moran? Of course not; she's part of their pathetic establishment. Any by the way, I'm sure you noticed that Bernie moved rapidly to endorse Status Quo Joe. Blue Dog loser Dan Lipinski-- and right in Obama's neighborhood-- still hasn't endorsed the progressive who vanquished him, Marie Newman.

Before I turned the video off, Obama was babbling about how the Republicans are not interested progress, just power. And that doesn't also describe the New Dems and Blue Dogs, who make up the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and have absolute veto power over all progressive initiatives-- which they use without hesitation?

Yesterday, in a letter to their members, Roots Action asked why the Chamber of Commerce would go after AOC and they proffered a few ideas in response.

Here's something AOC said in a recent video published by The Hill that no candidate backed by the Chamber of Commerce would ever say:

"We have to start demanding and organizing from the bottom up, from grassroots movements, from nurses to warehouse workers to grocery store employees to the halls of Congress, demanding that we strip profit motive out of our decisions and reprioritize the public good and the health of everyday people."

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is openly criticizing the class bias of the Governor of New York in finally halting mortgage payments but not rent payments during the COVID-19 crisis. (RootsAction had been pressing for both steps.)

AOC is demanding that the U.S. government extend the census-taking period because of the coronavirus pandemic.

She's expressing appropriate but rare outrage at the xenophobic approach that Trump has taken to talking about coronavirus, and explaining the impacts this has on efforts to halt the spread of the virus.

She's denouncing Amazon's attempted smear campaign against a worker who organized a walk-out.

She's pressing for better responses out of Congress to the current crisis, and she's educating the public about Congress's actions.

AOC has become such a major presence in opposition to Trump's outrages that he actually urged Dr. Anthony Fauci to move to New York and run against her. (There's no indication that Fauci is taking Trump's joking remark seriously.)

So... I'll take Obama's endorsement of Status Quo Joe seriously when I see one from him for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and her reelection battle to hold onto a seat that the Chamber of Commerce-- basically an arm of the Republican Party and the Steny Hoyer wing of the House Dems-- has spent nearly a million dollars to deny her, in favor of corporate shill Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. There are only 12 members of the House on the Blue America "Worthy Incumbents" list (which you can see by tapping the thermometer on the right). There was no hesitation to put AOC on that list and now we think she may well need the support. Republicans and conservative fake Democrats are pouring massive amounts of money into Caruso-Cabrera's planned smear campaign against AOC-- and in New York City, having the Cuomo machine behind you means a great deal. So, take a moment to think about how much worse an already putrid Congress would be without a compelling young leader like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So far... not a peep out of the DCCC about how Democratic operatives are prohibited from working against Democratic incumbents. Someone should ask Cheri Bustos and Nancy Pelosi about that... instead of this.

And this is Chris Martenson's daily pandemic podcast from yesterday... an episode that may be too wonky for most of us this time.